The Book Of Arrick
Written by Cameron Dorsey
Photos by Kobi McCray
Filmmaker and photographer Arrick Wilson has played the long game. After picking up a camera for the first time back in 2019, the Virginia Beach-bred artist has been picking up new skills and perfecting old ones ever since. Culminating in the premiere of his first documentary, “Made In The Sun”, on December 8th in VCU’s Commons Theater. A student of the likes of Spike Lee and Gordon Parks, Wilson has gone from family movies on Windows Movie Maker, to cementing himself into Richmond’s creative scene through his magazine Black Creative Mag among his other numerous collaborations and short films.
This is…The Book Of Arrick
How did your journey with photography & film start?
So I initially started with photography. My aunt used to do a lot of photography, she was a big Nikon shooter and she took my pictures growing up. So around 2019, she left one of her cameras at my house, so I always tell people I basically stole her camera. It was a Nikon D90 which was pretty dated, from 2008 I think. It had two kit lenses with it, so I just started taking pictures like that, Then COVID happened, and I was like I might as well, so I started taking more pictures with it, and it seemed pretty cool. But with this older camera, there are so many limitations, so around the end of COVID I really stopped taking pictures with that camera and I was just learning during COVID. Around the summer of 2020, I was working at Chick-fil-A and ended up buying my Nikon 3300. So I was like okay, cool. I got something that's going to be better. Now when I think back, probably wasn't the best idea to spend $200 on that, but with that camera, I really started taking pictures of actual people. I started telling my friends and taking pictures of them, and at this point, I was charging people like $15 a shoot. I went to college and took my camera here, started taking more pictures but after a while, I knew I needed another camera. So sophomore year, I got a Nikon 5200 around that spring or fall semester, and that's when things started going up.
Okay, so talk about the transition into video and filmmaking.
I got a Sony a6000, and I didn't know about like a s-log and raw video. So I'm thinking the a6000 is going to have the raw video, doesn't have raw video and doesn't have s-log, none of that. So I just try to work around it which does not help. So around that time, I'm just shooting. This is when I started shooting for my magazine, and I had a series that was just basically going around campus to shoot black students on campus. Honestly, freshman year, I was nervous to take pictures with people. I’d probably say my whole life I've had anxiety just around people in general. I didn't really know I had anxiety until college. I just thought it was just me being nervous but that's really when I started reaching out and getting out of that anxiety. I think that probably helped me the most, without that I probably wouldn't be doing some stuff I do now. It really helped me set aside my anxiety and let me meet new people, and for new people to meet me so that was that was cool.
So I was what I was doing was using the color profile and making everything look dry because it didn't have s-log. So I was just doing that and putting in random film LUTs on top of it, which wasn't the best idea, but hey. This year, for my birthday, my family got me a Sony a7R ii, which is a little dated, full-frame camera but it's still probably one of the best in my opinion. So that's what I started using, I started really learning from YouTube University about s-log and color profiles. So I really tapped into that and that's when I started really doing video. I’ll probably say it took me like three months to really figure out what I was doing, and that's when I shot my first short film “Let's Try This Again”. I'm a big, big, big Spike Lee fan, he’s probably my favorite director. So I really wanted it to look like that, I think I probably overdid it a little bit but I think it turned out pretty cool. Growing up I always wanted to do movies, I remember doing a movie with my cousins and my brother when I was little with the the old Windows video editor. But you know, I was wanting to make movies for a long time, so it was cool to do my first short film. And I think since then I've pretty much been doing better work, everything has really just been a trial and error and learning from what I did in the past.
Shantel (Promo) by Arrick Wilson
So outside of Spike, obviously that's a huge one, but who else are some of your inspirations visually?
So, before I got into video, I started learning about Gordon Parks, his photography is so cool to me. It's hard to really state how inspirational his work is because he wasn't just a photographer, he was a director, he was a cinematographer, and he was a musician. He probably had a full life honestly. He's probably one of my earliest inspirations. Jamel Shabazz‘s photography in New York is really cool. I love Jordan Peele’s direction and writing work, Get Out and Us are probably top 20 movies in my opinion. John Singleton is one of the directors I look up to. I know he's not the greatest guy but I really like Quentin Tarantino’s work. Around sophomore year, I started looking at black exploitation movies, that’s how I got into Gordon Parks, and Tarantino basically stole from them. I mean he stole but I still like the movies.
So Black Creative Magazine, how did that come about, and what is your goal with that project?
I remember my brother, he had got a magazine in the mail. I was looking through the magazine, and I was like, Okay, this is cool, I don't see a lot of black people in here though. Amazing photography, amazing dresses, but I didn't see a lot of black people, so that's really how it started. My first attempt was just taking pictures of people on the first day of school, and that was really how it started. After that, I kind of lagged on it, and I needed a little bit more organization so I got in touch with my friend Madison. She's a business major, so she knows how to get stuff going and that's really how we started. Right now, I’m kind of being selfish working on personal projects so I haven't done that much with it. We just released articles but soon we're supposed to be coming out with some photography work. But the overall goal, I really don't have one right now. I just really wanted it to be a safe space for black people on my campus, which is a PWI. Just a place for them to see themselves, it can be hard to see yourself where you're not supposed to be sometimes, so that's the goal for right now.
You mentioned creating a safe space for your classmates at VCU which is PWI. Talk about transitioning there from Virginia Beach, and then finding a community out there.
Yeah, it's really crazy, it's like different places honestly, I can't lie. I will probably say I see more cohesiveness in Richmond honestly. Every city in the Tidewater area is really separate, nobody's really together. But what I see in Richmond is I've found way more people who are down to stuff together, create together, work, and do something really cool. I've seen that way more in Richmond. It’s crazy because there's a lot of creatives in the 757 but nobody wants to come together. But honestly, they are two different places.
What is BLKRUNWAY?
BLKRUNWAY is a black fashion group at VCU. My sophomore year when I was a journalism major, my project was to come up with a story. So I saw BLKRUNWAY, and I was like okay, this seems pretty cool. I know the person who leads it, so I covered them. And I was like this is really, really dope, a bunch of black students who are creating a space in the fashion world. And after covering them, I didn't say anything, but I wanted to be involved. Out of nowhere, the co-founders, L.A and Parys, reached out like we want you to be our Director of Media. Do some videos here and there, just help us out with growing BLKRUNWAY, and it’s been really cool being in another space in Richmond with other black creatives who are trying to do something really cool. Shout out L.A and Parys, the whole BLKRUNWAY, there are some great people who are doing some really really cool stuff. And our show here is gonna be jaw-dropping.
Shot by Arrick Wilson
Arrick’s Film Made In The Sun, premiering December 8th at 7 PM at VCU’s Commons Theater
